Cleo

I still thought about the woman driver who’d run over Sam all those years earlier. She used to haunt my mind. My anger towards her had been like fire run rampant. In those early days, whenever I read newspaper stories about parents forgiving the murderers of their children, I could only imagine they were avoiding honesty.

Time may not heal everything, but it gives perspective. Ford Escorts went out of style years before. I hardly saw them anymore, let alone blue ones. The car that killed Sam was probably an ashtray. The streets had given way to four-wheel-drives. I was finally able to accept fully that Sam’s tragedy was hers as well. That January day in 1983 would be carved into her heart as deeply as it was on mine. Every time she slid behind a driver’s wheel, or saw a blond boy crossing a street, she must have seen his ghost.

I was finally emotionally equipped to meet this woman, if it were ever possible. I’d tried throwing out a few lines. In a magazine interview I’d suggested I was ready. I wanted to put my arms around her, acknowledge the pain she must have endured all these years, and tell her I forgave her. Utterly.

A response arrived in the mail, but not the one I was expecting.

Dear Helen,

My wife showed me the recent article on you and she urged me to write to you as we both felt very sad after reading about the dreadfully difficult time you had following Sam’s death.

I’m not sure if it will be of any comfort to you, but I came on the scene of the accident very soon after it had happened. The driver of the car was not there and I assumed she had gone for help. My companion went down the road to stop the traffic and I stayed with Sam—he was deeply unconscious and I am quite sure he did not suffer at all. I also think that he did in fact die while I was with him—before the police and ambulance people, who were, without exception very kind and thoughtful, arrived.

Eventually the police said it would be OK for me and my workmate to leave so we did. I was very distressed at what had happened, so much so that when I got home from work that night I had real difficulty in telling my wife about Sam. It seemed such a dreadful waste of a dear little boy’s life—but it was no one’s fault.

I thought about calling on you at that time but decided against it as I was a stranger and felt it would be an invasion of your privacy. I still don’t know if that was the right thing to do, but I feel now that you would like to know Sam was not alone—hence this letter, and if it is even a small amount of comfort to you then I will be very pleased to have written it to you.

Yours sincerely

Arthur Judson

Christchurch

P.S. Have been enjoying your newspaper column for years.

I read the letter again and again. Shock coursed through me as I relived the events of that day from someone else’s perspective, a stranger but a man of great heart. The letter I sent in return had no hope of expressing the depth of my gratitude to him. To have stayed alongside a dying boy would have taken courage, and to have written the letter almost as much. His letter had given me a greater sense of completion than anything I could have hoped from meeting the woman driver.

I kept the letter and treasure it to this day. Knowing Sam hadn’t died alone or in great pain has gone a long way to easing my sorrow.

The world must be full of silent heroes like him, people who stay behind at accident scenes when it would be easier to leave. Risking their personal tranquillity, they give the greatest solace one person can provide another—the comfort of not dying alone. Then, like angels, they disappear without a trace.

Conversion

Beware the passionate convert. She may bore you with cat stories.

“Oh, look at the dear little kitten!” a stranger exclaimed when she saw Cleo posed sphinxlike on our front path.

“She’s not a kitten,” I explained. “She’s actually very old.”

“Really? She looks so…young.”

If we could have bottled whatever gene Cleo had that made her look younger the older she grew, we’d have several beach houses, a yacht and a season pass to the space shuttle by now. I put a lot of it down to attitude. Hers, of course. Growing old wasn’t a tragedy, as far as Cleo was concerned. She simply despised the whole process.

Menopausal women would have nothing to fear if they could see how willingly Cleo shed slinky youth to become an increasingly authoritative, essential ruler of our household. High priestess of the family, she expressed her views on everything from whether her fish had been properly mashed to how early human slaves should be forced out of bed. Anyone who hadn’t risen by dawn could expect a screeching wake-up call from Cleo outside their bedroom door.